Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Safari Cary in "Mountain of Doom" (Fox;1948)

I freely admit it, Pappy posted this story back in December 2009. I also had the scans in the queue, but he had notified me in advance that he was planning on running "Mountain of Doom" starring Safari Cary, as part of his own jungle girls week. Cool beans, but enough time may have elapsed to allow me the opportunity to rerun the story, since it is a pretty nice looking adventure tale from the Fox Comics series, Dagar Desert Hawk #15 (Apr.1948). Safari Cary was featured in Dagar from #14-23. Just like Pappy, I have no clue who to credit with the sweet artwork, but that doesn't mean you can't appreciate this blast from the past. The Catacombs is grateful to Don "Zu-Gogo" Falkos for providing the scans for this story. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork belong to the original publisher and/or the creators and is reproduced here solely for entertainment purposes. Enjoy!

Yep, that's Canadian Edmond Good going under his pen name of Damond. He did some fine work for Bell Features before going to the States to further his career. There's an entry for him here:http://lambiek.net/artists/g/good_edmond.htm

How it all began ....

In 1933, publishers at Eastern Color Press, intent to make better use of their printing equipment (which frequently sat idle between jobs), came up with the idea of printing an 8-page comic section that could be folded down from the large broadsheet to a smaller 9-inch by 12-inch format. The result was the first modern comic book. Containing reprints of newspaper comic strips, this experimental comic book titled "Funnies On Parade" was given away for free. It proved so popular that the following year Eastern published "Famous Funnies" and took the bold step of selling the comic for ten cents through chain stores. The enterprise was a smashing success and Eastern began churning out numerous reprints on a monthly basis. Other publishers, eager to get in on the profits, jumped on the bandwagon and the comic book industry was born!